,
Transformers: The Last Knight (12A.)
Directed by Michael Bay.
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Hopkins, Laura Haddock, Josh Duhamel, Isabela Moner, John Turturro and Tony Hale. 149 mins.
The thing about Anthony Hopkins is that he really loves acting. He'll be 80 this year but still wants to be in anything and everything, to orate against the dying of the light. Laurels aren't to be rested on, they are to be spread around. He doesn't need the work; but he needs to work. His desire to keep acting is such that he doesn't much care where he does it, or who he does it for. No doubt he'll be thesp-shamed for putting out for the fifth Transformers movie but his pleasure in performing is so infectious, so guileless that he brings joy to something that is generally joyless, and partially redeems a series of films that are generally worthless, made by people who have long since lost any belief in them.
It isn't all down to him, but Last Knight is only the second Transformers film that isn't actively hateful. I wouldn't quite stretch to calling it good (only the third one Dark Of The Moon is that) but it is moderately enjoyable and it at least partially delivers on the promise of being big dumb fun. What it mainly delivers is spectacle. All of these films are pitched on an epic scale which they somehow diminish with the blunt assault of the action scenes. A lot of this has been filmed with 3D Imax cameras and, when seen on a 3D Imax screen, the results are consistently stunning. I doubt you'll see a more magnificent big screen spectacle all summer. There's nothing here to match the Chicago levelling climax of Dark Of The Moon but the general standard of the visuals and action is higher than the other installments. And the humour, which is usually a mild form of torture in these films, occasionally raises a laugh. (John Torturro, who has previously been the series most tolerable deliverer of comic relief, returns in a cameo and literally gets to phone it in from a call box in Cuba.)
What you don't get is any kind of coherent narrative. This time out director Michael Bay has decided that storytelling is for pussies. It starts with King Arthur (presciently giving a kicking to Guy Ritchie's flop) getting a helping hand in battle by a stranded Tranny, before bringing it up to the present day where Hopkins plays the last guardian of a Transformers equivalent of the Knights Templar. He has some sacred duty to perform which involves a polo playing Oxford History Don who goes by the ridiculous name of Vivian Wembley (played by a Laura Haddock.) Wahlberg is also involved because of a bracelet that has attached itself to his arm. Bay is famous for his fast cutting style but this time, perhaps due to Hopkins' stately presence, it felt like he had eased up a little on his metronomic cutting-every-three-seconds style. Here he is prepared to hold on for that extra second of two if some little character thing seems to be working; some shots in Last Knight looked like they might have lasted anywhere up to ten seconds.
Six editors are credited with working on the film and none of them managed to make any sense of it. These films are always tough to follow. You need the hearing of an owl to make out all the garbled dialogue along with a brain capable of visualising head spinning, trans-dimensional banality. Last Knight though is the first time Bay seems to have actively abandoned any thought for narrative coherence. In the last act particularly, characters will appear from nowhere, and then jump to another place without any thought for explaining how they got from one place to another. I doubt a single person in the cinema could have accurately recounted the full plot afterwards.
They are crazy, perverse endeavours these films. Beneath all its militaristic fervour, they are improbable pleas for tolerance. If governments didn't resort to anti-trannie scare mongering, if man and machine could just get along, the world would be a better place. As the world looks to be ending, there is a dismissive remark about how Putin and the, unnamed, American President had already retired to their bunkers. The Transformers are, after all, asylum seekers, coming over here from their own dying planet to take over ours, bringing their own battles and conflicts to our streets. They do at least work hard on integrating, by turning into cars, but if I'm honesty, they really all look the same to me.
Transformers
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
Transformers: Age of Extinction
Transformers: The Last Knight (12A.)
Directed by Michael Bay.
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Hopkins, Laura Haddock, Josh Duhamel, Isabela Moner, John Turturro and Tony Hale. 149 mins.
The thing about Anthony Hopkins is that he really loves acting. He'll be 80 this year but still wants to be in anything and everything, to orate against the dying of the light. Laurels aren't to be rested on, they are to be spread around. He doesn't need the work; but he needs to work. His desire to keep acting is such that he doesn't much care where he does it, or who he does it for. No doubt he'll be thesp-shamed for putting out for the fifth Transformers movie but his pleasure in performing is so infectious, so guileless that he brings joy to something that is generally joyless, and partially redeems a series of films that are generally worthless, made by people who have long since lost any belief in them.
It isn't all down to him, but Last Knight is only the second Transformers film that isn't actively hateful. I wouldn't quite stretch to calling it good (only the third one Dark Of The Moon is that) but it is moderately enjoyable and it at least partially delivers on the promise of being big dumb fun. What it mainly delivers is spectacle. All of these films are pitched on an epic scale which they somehow diminish with the blunt assault of the action scenes. A lot of this has been filmed with 3D Imax cameras and, when seen on a 3D Imax screen, the results are consistently stunning. I doubt you'll see a more magnificent big screen spectacle all summer. There's nothing here to match the Chicago levelling climax of Dark Of The Moon but the general standard of the visuals and action is higher than the other installments. And the humour, which is usually a mild form of torture in these films, occasionally raises a laugh. (John Torturro, who has previously been the series most tolerable deliverer of comic relief, returns in a cameo and literally gets to phone it in from a call box in Cuba.)
What you don't get is any kind of coherent narrative. This time out director Michael Bay has decided that storytelling is for pussies. It starts with King Arthur (presciently giving a kicking to Guy Ritchie's flop) getting a helping hand in battle by a stranded Tranny, before bringing it up to the present day where Hopkins plays the last guardian of a Transformers equivalent of the Knights Templar. He has some sacred duty to perform which involves a polo playing Oxford History Don who goes by the ridiculous name of Vivian Wembley (played by a Laura Haddock.) Wahlberg is also involved because of a bracelet that has attached itself to his arm. Bay is famous for his fast cutting style but this time, perhaps due to Hopkins' stately presence, it felt like he had eased up a little on his metronomic cutting-every-three-seconds style. Here he is prepared to hold on for that extra second of two if some little character thing seems to be working; some shots in Last Knight looked like they might have lasted anywhere up to ten seconds.
Six editors are credited with working on the film and none of them managed to make any sense of it. These films are always tough to follow. You need the hearing of an owl to make out all the garbled dialogue along with a brain capable of visualising head spinning, trans-dimensional banality. Last Knight though is the first time Bay seems to have actively abandoned any thought for narrative coherence. In the last act particularly, characters will appear from nowhere, and then jump to another place without any thought for explaining how they got from one place to another. I doubt a single person in the cinema could have accurately recounted the full plot afterwards.
They are crazy, perverse endeavours these films. Beneath all its militaristic fervour, they are improbable pleas for tolerance. If governments didn't resort to anti-trannie scare mongering, if man and machine could just get along, the world would be a better place. As the world looks to be ending, there is a dismissive remark about how Putin and the, unnamed, American President had already retired to their bunkers. The Transformers are, after all, asylum seekers, coming over here from their own dying planet to take over ours, bringing their own battles and conflicts to our streets. They do at least work hard on integrating, by turning into cars, but if I'm honesty, they really all look the same to me.
Transformers
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
Transformers: Age of Extinction
